Search Aggregation: Find candidates with a click

As a recruiter, trying to find skilled candidates in multiple resume databases can often feel like a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos in which you’re trying to play as all the hippos at once. It’s excessive and, ultimately, unnecessary. After all, why should you go through so much trouble when one hippo can simply eat all of the food? In other words, why would you search multiple databases separately when you can search them all at once?

Let’s face it: a lot of us have been searching the wrong way. Performing the same search on four different sites isn’t the best use of your time, especially given that the results from site to site don’t always vary as much as we would like. Advanced searches add to the headache, with each site having their own unique interfaces to learn and Boolean terms to remember.

Of course, you’ve thought about these problems before – and felt the headache that entails – and it likely seems like you have no other option. Thankfully, there is a better way to find skilled candidates and it can often be found in your applicant tracking system: one-click search aggregation.

Search aggregation is exactly what it sounds like. Found in select applicant tracking systems, it is a built-in search engine that allows you to source candidates from multiple resume databases at once. Search aggregation grabs the search results from each resume database you choose and compiles them into one place.

In addition to searching multiple resume databases, search aggregation further streamlines the process by automatically inputting the correct Boolean terms for each specific search engine. That means you no longer need to remember which site uses “+” instead of “AND” or any other headache-inducing difference.

In short, search aggregation saves you the headache of sifting through multiple resume databases by remembering Boolean term differences and various site layouts for you. Look for search aggregation in your applicant tracking system and start finding candidates in half the time.

The examples above were pulled directly from External Search, a feature found in the CATS applicant tracking system (available in the Recruiter Premium package). Not all applicant tracking systems are created equally; your mileage may vary with regards to your search aggregation experience, depending on the software you use.